Mapping F1: Teams, Power Units and Tracks

Ok, a little reveal: yours truly is a bit of an F1 fan.

In case you’re not familiar, that’s the Formula 1 World Championship, the pinnacle of motor racing worldwide. I find the engineering side of the business just as interesting as the racing itself. There are 10 teams, each running two cars. The well funded teams have over a 1,000 employees on staff to design and manufacture their cars. Further interesting fact: the cars are continuously evolving: at every race every teams are installing newly designed and upgraded parts in an effort to give their drivers an edge.

The McLaren MCL38 — Credit: McLaren Racing

If you want to learn a little bit about just how crazy it is, check out this video on what one of the teams goes through just to manufacture a bolt:

[BTW if you liked that video, you should also watch this one.]

Although the last two years of the championship have been interminably soporific with the advent of the Orange anticliMax¹, there is perhaps a glimmer of hope for the rest of the 2024.

It’s a grueling season with 24 races all over the world, in 2024 running from March to December. They do get a summer break though: during the month of August there is a three week lull. If you’re like me, boredom in August consequently sets in. What should one do, pray?

Well in my case I went looking for maps. Maps about F1. And I could find very few. Really?

I was left with only one option. I endeavored to make some myself. So, without further ado, please let me reveal my feeble effort. If you like what you see, feel free to download the PDF here. You can also review the list of locations in a live map on Apple Maps (now available on the web!):

For any of the images below click on it to get a bigger picture.

F1 Teams

There are 10 F1 Teams in 2024. The vast majority are based in England:

Here are maps of the individual team locations. They’re all at the same scale, so you can compare sizes:

F1 Power Units

In 2024 four different organizations supply “power units” to the teams. The term “power unit” is defined as the combination of the internal combustion engine and an electric motor powered by two different energy recovery systems, one from regenerative braking and one from engine heat recovery. The four suppliers are: